How to validate an email address with php?

Question

I started trying to write a php script to validate the email address that the user enters in my form. Can anybody please help me to finish it? Thanks in advance. Your help will be greatly appreciated :) NOTE: Please do not tell me to use javascript or jQuery. I need to do this with php :/

<?php
$mail = $_POST['mail'];
$formcontent = "Email: $mail";
$recipient = "email@example.com";
$subject = "Mail that uploaded picture";
$mailheader = "From: my website";

if ($mail == ""){
echo "Please enter a valid email address. We want to contact you using your email address. Do not worry, nobody will be able to see it.";
}

else{
mail($recipient, $subject, $formcontent, $mailheader) or die("Error!");
echo 'Your email address has been successfully added to your photo !<br>We will contact you later to tell you how to win the $50 000 :)<br><br>';}

?>

see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/201323/using-a-regular-expression-to-validate-an-email-address and decide to send a confirmation email to validate — VBCPP, Apr 22 '14 at 21:56
Do not use RegEx. Use this: http://stackoverflow.com/a/12026873/362536 — Brad, Apr 22 '14 at 21:58

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 22 '14 at 22:17

2

Like this:

$email = 'email@example.com';
if (filter_var($email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)){
    echo 'Email OK';
}

In your source code:

$mail = $_POST['mail'];
$formcontent = "Email: $mail";
$recipient = "email@example.com";
$subject = "Mail that uploaded picture";
$mailheader = "From: my website";

if (!filter_var($mail, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)){
    echo "Please enter a valid email address. We want to contact you using your email address. Do not worry, nobody will be able to see it.";
} else {
    mail($recipient, $subject, $formcontent, $mailheader) or die("Error!");
    echo 'Your email address has been successfully added to your photo !<br>We will contact you later to tell you how to win the $50 000 :)<br><br>';
}

edited Apr 22 '14 at 22:17

Funk Forty Niner

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answered Apr 22 '14 at 22:00

I don't know why this was downvoted. – Funk Forty Niner Apr 22 '14 at 22:02
Perhapps someone else wants the points, have a up vote for a correct answer :) – Scuzzy Apr 22 '14 at 22:03
It isn't downvoted, according to the vote count. – Brad Apr 22 '14 at 22:04
@Brad It was at the time I posted my first comment. Otherwise, I wouldn't have said it ;-) – Funk Forty Niner Apr 22 '14 at 22:04
@Fred-ii- I believe you... just pointing it out. Perhaps someone voted to quickly or by mistake. Rapid fire stackoverflow! – Brad Apr 22 '14 at 22:05
@Brad My guess is that Yoda got upvoted twice, making up for the downvote. – Funk Forty Niner Apr 22 '14 at 22:06
@Fred-ii- I can see the up and downvote count and there are no downvotes. – Brad Apr 22 '14 at 22:06
@Fred-ii- That's correct. ;-) – Apr 22 '14 at 22:06
@Brad Maybe as you said, the downvoter changed his/her mind. – Funk Forty Niner Apr 22 '14 at 22:07

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 22 '14 at 22:17

Ideally you should also be checking to see if $_POST['mail'] is defined because you will get an error / notice depending on your error_reporting level and display_errors.

Updated code:

if (!isset($_POST['mail']) || !filter_var($_POST['mail'], FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) {
    echo "Please enter a valid email address. We want to contact you using your email address. Do not worry, nobody will be able to see it.";
} else {
    $mail = $_POST['mail'];
    $formcontent = "Email: $mail";
    $recipient = "email@example.com";
    $subject = "Mail that uploaded picture";
    $mailheader = "From: my website";

    mail($recipient, $subject, $formcontent, $mailheader) or die("Error!");
    echo 'Your email address has been successfully added to your photo !<br>We will contact you later to tell you how to win the $50 000 :)<br><br>';
}

Your suggestion is `if ($mail == "" || !filter_var($mail, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)){}`, but the `$mail == ""` is not needed in the condition. — , Apr 22 '14 at 22:10
Good call, i've updated the code to also check if $_POST['mail'] is actually set. — Thomas Lomas, Apr 22 '14 at 22:16

How to validate an email address with php?

2 Answers2